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Devin and I spend too many nights at our wine store, MWX,  taking turns quickly choking down a slice of cheese pizza in between helping customers, reheating 3-day-old leftovers, or forgoing food altogether and opting to drink our dinner instead. (This doesn’t work as well when one of you is pregnant.)

We have many foodies in our lives from friends who cook for fun and blog about it, to restaurant hot spots pushing their gorgeous plates of food in our direction to “try.” And, we genuinely love to cook ourselves so we really have no excuses.

Devin and I ran across a stranger’s blog (now, of course, we are hell-bent on becoming friends or family with this person after trying out his brilliant recipe) who cooks these fantastic little meals in his closet, allegedly. Our back “office” here at the store basically resembles a corner office with a view of the park – but in reality really is a broom closet where, even Devin and I as skinny as we are – have to sit on each other or take turns sitting if we both need to be back there at the same time. Naturally, we thought this recipe would make a lot of sense given our “space” and we’d get a good, old-fashioned, store-cooked meal for dinner.

We landed on Wednesday to be THE jalapeno grilled cheese event – the dinner of the century, we were anticipating. I come in to the store at noon on Wednesdays and ran a few errands beforehand – all the while, proudly packing my Presto Skillet and plug-in with me around the Upper East Side because I wasn’t going to head home before coming to the store.

Devin picked up enough jalapenos for 4 sandwiches – or, as we now know, enough jalapenos to leave all 10 of my fingers stinging like a terrible case of frostbite thawing out – even 16 hours later. Also, enough jalapenos to throw at least 3 employees, 2 customers and 1 wine rep into a completely hysterical coughing fit. She also bought the sliced sourdough bread, cream cheese, corn chips, cheddar jack cheese, pickles and chutney. We were going to eat like kings tonight. The customers were going to have to wait.

The sandwiches were an incredible hit! Spicy, sour, creamy and cheesy. We paired them with the Flaca Torrontes from Argentina – you can buy it in our store for $21.95. Just when I thought the jalapenos might be a bit too much, I sloshed around a mouthful of the Flaca and, just like that – even the smell of this wine cut right through the  spice and the round and melony (yet crisp) flavors snuffed out any worries I had about the fire igniting in my mouth.

Devin and I are also battling the crud – her bronchial, me sinusy. (Don’t let this keep you from coming in our store – I thoroughly Lysoled the hell outta the joint this morning.) So, with our genius jalapeno dinner plans we also (momentarily) breathed a little easier.

http://www.closetcooking.com/2011/04/jalapeno-popper-grilled-cheese-sandwich.html